


More Than Kin

by Stormwind13



Series: Core of Strength [5]
Category: Naruto
Genre: AU, Civilians, Gen, Original Characters - Freeform, Sakura's family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-24
Updated: 2015-02-24
Packaged: 2018-03-14 21:12:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3425780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stormwind13/pseuds/Stormwind13
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>... and less than kind.</p><p>Sakura's family is large, but civilian, which is why she spends most of her time at Iruka-sensei’s house (where talk of kunai is normal and the only type of questions she is asked are about school and not whether her mother has arranged for her marriage yet).</p>
            </blockquote>





	More Than Kin

Sakura's family is large, but civilian, which is why she spends most of her time at Iruka-sensei’s house (where talk of kunai is normal and the only type of questions she is asked are about school and not whether her mother has arranged for her marriage yet).

Her mother is the middle of three children (a dressmaker, a cloth merchant and an artist) and never wanted a child (Sakura had asked, when she was younger, why she didn’t have any siblings. Her mother had told her that her father had been the one who wanted a child and if he wanted another one, he could carry it. Sakura hadn’t asked again and contented herself with her cousins and told herself it was enough) but she loved her husband and had given him a daughter that she loved as best she could.

Her oldest aunt on her mother's side is a dressmaker that has never wanted to be anything else and seems happiest when she is sewing in her little shop and teaching her second youngest daughter how to follow in her footsteps (her oldest is apprenticed to the baker and Sakura knows that her cousin sneaks away during her lunch breaks to flirt with the chūnin at the mission desk (she thinks that Yumi is serious about Shimari Nara and hopes that the two actually manage to make it to the alter)). 

But her dressmaker aunt's youngest daughter just started the Academy this year and Sakura hopes that the little girl makes it. That her cousin’s genin team isn't a mess of sharp edges and loud noises that never quite manage to fit together. Sakura tries as best she can to help her cousin study and teach her about teamwork and knows that sometimes, even that isn’t enough. 

Her youngest aunt is an artist (her mother, who is grounded and practical, always sniffs when her aunt’s profession comes up in conversation but is always the first to place a commission or attend a show) and travels wherever her fancy takes her. Sakura has always admired that and wished, sometimes, that she didn’t have anything holding her in one place (when she is older, her aunt tells her that she has spent her entire life looking for something to hold her down long enough to take roots. “We’re children of the trees, child, not bits of dandelion flitting about. And trees aren’t meant to remain rootless for long.”). But her youngest aunt never finds something she’s willing to put down roots for, not even the daughter that Sakura meets when she’s fifteen and the little girl is one. 

Her father is the youngest of six (he was the only one to become a shinobi and his parents could barely afford the academy and book fees, but they were so, so proud when he graduated) and the only one that doesn’t have the stigma of foreign clinging to him like a cloak. 

Her oldest uncle is equal parts gruff and thoughtful and Sakura thinks that he could have been great, had he been young enough when her father’s family fled Water Country to be considered for the Academy. But he hadn’t been and so she plays shogi with him and watches while he works magic with his hands and fixes watches and clocks and tinkers with mechanical parts.

Her oldest cousin is much the same, though much quicker to smile and tease (his hands are just as magic and Sakura pretends to not see the seals that he and her uncle sometimes slip into the interior of a toy to allow it to do just a little more than a toy should be able to). He is engaged to a pretty girl from a minor shinobi clan and Sakura hopes that his children learn the seals that she has seen (another part of her hopes not, because they will be shinobi and she wants those seals, at least, to remain untainted by the uses that shinobi will have for them).

(She has never been told why her family fled from Water Country, but after meeting Zabuza and Haku and hearing Kakashi-sensei explain she had guessed. And then she had seen pictures from Uzushiogakure and looked at her family’s shades of reds and pinks and remembers her uncle’s seals and wondered, even more, if Water had been the first country that her family had fled from.)

Her uncle’s youngest son has just joined the Academy and Sakura sees him sometimes when she passes the outdoor training grounds (she isn’t the only one with that shade of pink) and hopes that he is having an easier time than her (she somehow doubts it – her hair was bad enough for her and she was a girl, so she hopes that he has friends, at least, to ease the sting of teasing). 

Her oldest aunt (her father's oldest sister who runs a bar in the civilian sector and only grudgingly allows shinobi in her bar) is a simmering fountain of resentment when she sees Sakura ( _I could have been one too, I could have been better than my brother, but I was a girl_ ) and her three children pick up on that and the oldest (sixteen and apprenticed to a weapons maker) never acknowledges Sakura when she goes in to buy her weapons (she will never admit how much this hurts, but she can't bring herself to go elsewhere). 

Her second oldest cousin is exactly her age (nearly down to the hour and until Sakura joined the Academy it had been a joke that they were nearly twins that had simply been separated before birth. After she joined, the jokes had petered out until there was nothing left but uneasy glances whenever their family gathered.) and wants nothing more than to be a doctor, but there is a clear line for what civilian girls can and can’t do, so Sakura knows that her cousin throws herself into her nursing duties and pretends that is enough.  
It isn’t until they are older that they reconnect, a civilian nurse and semi-competent sometimes medic nin, and laugh about how they might really have been twins that were separated before birth (when her aunt dies, Sakura doesn’t go to the funeral, but she does find a bottle of the strongest alcohol she can and leaves it on her cousin’s kitchen counter. It’s the best she can do, for an aunt that only loved to resent what life had done to her).

Her youngest cousin (was seven and Sakura only knows that he loved animals) had been playing by the wall when one of Orochimaru’s snakes broke through. Sakura is never sure whether she’s thankful they found her cousin’s body or not. 

Her next oldest aunt is blind and lives with her oldest uncle and his wife and their two children but she (Aunt Mei is blind but that never seems to hinder her and Sakura wonders, sometimes, if her father had shown his sister more than a civilian ought to know, but she never asks because that is an answer she doesn't want to know) loves them all with a purity that is sometimes breathtaking and Sakura feels so small in the face of the love that Aunt Mei has and hopes, that if something happened, she'd be half as accepting and loving (she doesn't think she would be though. She can admit she isn't that kind). But Aunt Mei carves and Sakura's mother always places her carvings in the shop window and Sakura knows which shops are family's because only they have little birds and dogs and animals placed carefully in windows and on counters. 

Her next oldest uncle (last uncle) builds. Houses and shops, for money, and when he has free time he builds tables and cabinets (Sakura looks at her hands sometimes and wonders if they would be any good a creating, rather than destroying, but by the time she’s sixteen she’s been a shinobi too long to learn any different. That doesn’t stop her uncle from patiently guiding her through the construction of all the furniture in her new apartment and it feels a tiny bit like approval). 

His oldest son flits between apprenticeships like a hummingbird until his father puts his foot down and forces him to stick with something for more than a month. To everyone’s surprise, becoming a scribe seems to have calmed him down. (He starts hanging out with Sakura at the front gates after she becomes a chūnin and asking her about the different lands she’s visited and when a series of books about a traveling set of cousins appear around the village (they aren’t very popular, but Sakura’s father buys a copy for every book that appears) Sakura rolls her eyes and starts to pay more attention to the lands she visits). 

The three youngest all are in the Academy and Sakura knows that most of her father’s chūnin pay goes to her cousins’ (all of them) education because sometimes she knows he feels guilty, even if he shouldn’t. She never says anything, but she starts gathering all of her cousins together to train them at the same time (she’s not very good, she doesn’t think, but maybe they’ll have a better start than her, if they at least know about teamwork and family that doesn’t have to be blood).

Her youngest aunt is the only one that lives outside the walls of the village, married to a farmer that likes spending his money on D-ranks (Sakura has never done any for her uncle. She is both relieved and upset about this in equal measure) and she tries desperately to erase anything that might hint that she wasn’t born in Konoha (this includes barely interacting with her siblings, who cling to the remains of their former home like they’re afraid that letting go will mean losing themselves. Maybe they’re right). Sakura doesn’t know anything about her younger cousins, who are raised to be practical and grounded and never enter the walls of the village.

(Sakura sees how the farmers that live near the village but not in the village react to shinobi and she is glad, a little bit, that she will never have to see the suspicion and fear in her cousins’ eyes).

And on the nights when she does want family that understands her and that she understands in turn, Ino sleeps with her window open and Kakashi-sensei has a blanket thrown over the back of his couch and sometimes Ino’s father will wake up to one extra genin in his daughter’s room. He doesn’t say anything, just makes extra that morning and Sakura feels something in her settle, just a bit.

**Author's Note:**

> The first part of a larger series I'm working on, but this can stand alone. Please review!


End file.
